The wagons dump their loads into a chute which sends the coal sliding
down into the breaker. This machine breaks up the large lumps in which
it is brought out of the mine, and divides the coal into the various
sizes, nut, stove, egg, etc.

From the breaker the coal is carried to the washer, and then back to the
breaker ready to be sold.

As soon as the coal is ready to be loaded a train of trucks is brought
up in front of the breaker, a lever is touched, and the coal comes
pouring down into the trucks. A whole train can be loaded in ten minutes
by this process.

From the breaker the cars carry the coal to the canal-boats that are
waiting for it. The cars run on a trestle, and discharge their loads
through chutes into the boats, without a shovel having touched it since
the miners first blasted it out of the earth and loaded it on the
wagons.

Professor Winchell, in his "Sketches of Creation," gives a very
interesting description of a coal mine. He says:

"Armed each with a miner's lamp, and clad in a miner's garb borrowed for
the occasion, we step upon a platform, or "cage," six feet square,
suspended by iron rods connected with machinery moved by an engine, and,
at the word, begin to sink into the darkness beneath us. This
perpendicular hole, perhaps eight feet square, is called the shaft.

"Continuing to descend, we perceive the bed of coal underlaid by clay,
with abundant grass-like shoots and occasional stems of vegetation.